


a million little times

by backfire



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Cheating, F/M, like this is just cheating and angst there is nothing else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:55:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25757704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backfire/pseuds/backfire
Summary: This feels like a mistake. But it also feels like what she knows, and what she knows is that she’s not a good person, and he’s not a good person, but they are good at this. Hurting each other and not being able to stop. Wanting it, even.
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	a million little times

**Author's Note:**

> so this little thing was born from a number of folklore prompts i got on tumblr. i wrote a drabble for one at first and then decided to throw them all into this one angsty verse because...folklore, am i right?
> 
> the prompts were:
> 
> 1\. "but i'm a fire and i'll keep your brittle heart warm."  
> 2\. "i didn’t have it in myself to go with grace, cause when i fought you used to tell me i was brave"  
> 3\. "back when we were still changing for the better. wanting was enough. for me, it was enough."  
> 4\. "i knew you'd miss me once the thrill expired and you'd be standing in my front porch light and i knew you'd come back to me"
> 
> title is from illicit affairs, because _duh._

**but i’m a fire and i’ll keep your brittle heart warm**

  


This isn’t the first time Harry’s had the thought that they absolutely belong together, that they should just be together, instead of whatever this is.

Allie’s leaned against him on the balcony of his family’s place in Martha’s Vineyard, wearing nothing except a thin robe that’s parted open below the waist, one of her legs half-propped in his lap as she sips wine and stares out at the beach. His hand’s against her thigh, fingertips pressing in just slightly. He doesn’t know what lie she told her fiancé to get away with staying out here with him for this long. Maybe a business trip or whatever, but he thinks she must be going through something, because it’s been days and she hasn’t made any mention of leaving yet.

“Don’t,” she warns him as he slides his hand a little upward. She’s talking about his words, not what he’s doing, because he’s learned by now that’s the voice she uses when she anticipates what he’s about to say. “Don’t disturb the peace.”

Harry thinks he wouldn’t be able to give her peace if he tried, nor she him. He doesn’t know what peace she’s referring to. 

“I just think we could cut out all this extra work,” he says, continuing to slide his hand up. He sounds frustrated. This is about as tender as he’ll venture to get. One time, years ago, he told her he loved her and she cried and told him never to say that to her again, and then hadn’t spoken to him for months.

She sighs, stands up and sets the wine glass onto the side table. His hand falls away. She slides the balcony door open, and motions for him to follow her inside. They’re done talking about this, with barely any words exchanged. That’s okay; this isn’t an area of negotiation with her, and he’s come to accept that. In as much as he can, at least. 

Allie’s colors always look fantastic against the white of his sheets. Golden hair and pale skin, tanned around the shoulders and legs from all the time they spend lounging outside and making out by the pool, the blue of her eyes when she cracks them open in the morning and then rolls on top of him.

She’s gone in the morning, back to the fiancé in the city. She doesn’t leave a note, never does. That’s okay, too; he’ll take however much of her he can get, and has learned not to complain when that quantity is not ‘all.’

After the wedding, Harry considers—genuinely considers—cutting it off for good. It would be better this way, for both of them. It’s destructive, what they have, like a wildfire. Even if that’s also what makes it exciting—at least, for her. He thinks. He doesn’t actually know.

He even goes so far as to delete her number off his phone, confident that it’ll be laid to rest that way, because he’s always the one to reach out first. She’ll never initiate, but she’ll always agree. 

That doesn’t work, because one of the new hires at his firm is named Allie too, and they’re nothing alike at all, but it makes him think of her and once he starts he kind of can’t ever stop. And he has her number memorized, so deleting it was a huge gesture all for nothing in the first place. He’d been fooling himself by thinking he could ever leave her be. 

There’s a silver band on Allie’s finger when she comes over, resting underneath her rock of an engagement ring. He’s gotten used to that; he’ll get used to this one, too. 

Later, she’s coming down and is languid against the sheets when she says, out of the blue, “Do you wonder what it’d be like if we were just boring and happy?”

He tries not to show how astounded he is at her bringing up this line of questioning. Is careful when he responds, “Is that something you want?”

She doesn’t answer for a long time. “I don’t know.” It sounds like her truth. 

Harry knows that she’s stronger than he is; of the two, he’s the brittle one. The one that needs her more than she needs him. But the thought that it’s ever crossed her mind, the concept of them boring and happy together, is throwing him for a serious loop. He doesn’t know how to respond, ends up going and saying the exact wrong thing. 

“Do you want me to leave you alone?”

He feels like he’s out of his mind the moment the words are out in the air, because half the time he’s thinking them anyway. And he’s scared that she’ll answer “I don’t know” again and also really mean it. 

Instead, she shakes her head, her wedding band glinting in the light coming from his west-facing window as the sun starts to go down. “No. I don’t ever want that.”

  


**i didn’t have it in myself to go with grace,  
cause when i fought you used to tell me i was brave**

  


When Allie gets home, she makes herself a drink and decides to try and distract herself with work. Max is away for the week closing some deal, and she has this state bid due tomorrow. It’s like a multi-million dollar campaign and would be a huge get for her company and she kind of needs to do her best on it, so she tries to focus on her laptop, but her apartment is huge and empty and… God, she really wants to call him.

Not Max. Her _husband._ It still feels weird calling him that.

Harry.

It’s just that the sun is starting to set over the city and from the living room window, she can see the small park across the street. She and Harry used to go there after class sometimes, spread a blanket out under that one oak tree and pretend not to be daydrink, until the whole city was warm and tilting on its axis, grounded by where she would lean into the crook of his arm. He was always touching her in some little way, back then—a hand on her back, on her wrist, in her hair. Sometimes casual, sometimes signaling want for more, but always there.

He doesn’t do that anymore, she’s noticed. Hasn’t for a long time. She knows it’s her fault.

Anyway, she can see the park and she’s thinking of him and…she never calls him. She doesn’t let herself. Because she knows if she gives in and does it just the once, then she won’t be able to stop and she’ll ruin all this, the life she’s built for herself and like, she loves her husband. She married him, for God’s sake. But she thinks of Harry, too.

So Allie lets him bear that burden instead and yeah, maybe it’s fucking cruel, but they’re sort of used to hurting each other. It’s not enough for them to stop, and that’s kind of all that matters to her.

The last time she saw him was a month after the wedding, when Max came home one day and started complaining about their apartment not having enough space or something, and how his parents have seen a couple of great starter homes pop up on the market in Brookline and maybe they should think about moving soon and—Allie _loves_ her apartment. It’s _her_ apartment that Max moved into and she doesn’t want to leave and she feels too young to be moving into a house with him and she doesn’t want to move out of the city because…

She refused to let herself think about how, in the city, Harry was within reach at all times.

Harry called and told her to come over and she made some excuse to Max about needing to get back to the office to handle some crisis communication and left.

He said something that really scared her, that night. He asked if she wanted him to leave her alone, and...there isn’t anything she wants less, and when she said that, he gave her this sad look that made her feel like the world’s worst person. He also didn’t kiss her before she left that night. He always kisses her before she leaves. Instead, he looked at her with something like...disappointment in his eyes, or frustration, or anger, or...something. Maybe she’s not as good at reading him as she used to be.

That was months ago. Sometimes this happens, where they don’t see or talk to each other for this long. Usually only after they’ve fought, before they say fuck it and meet for sex without addressing anything they’ve fought about, but they haven’t fought this time. He just hasn’t called her.

Allie looks away from the window, back to her computer screen. She really does need to do this thing. And she’s not the one who calls. He’ll call her; he always does.

He does call, a few days later, the day before Max is supposed to come home.

She tries and fails not to sound breathless when she answers the phone, but he doesn’t respond right away, and after a few seconds of silence, she repeats, “Hello? Harry?”

He laughs, only it sounds far away, and she can make out the words, “Yeah? You think so?” or something like that. His tone of voice is familiar, because that’s the voice he uses before he gets her in bed, and then there’s another voice, a woman’s voice, giggling and answering him indistinctly. Allie hangs the fuck up, because he obviously has called her by accident.

It’s fine. She knows Harry sees and dates other women. Obviously he does, she knows this. Never anyone long term, not since _her_ , but he gets out there. She’d be a fucking hypocrite for having a problem with it. But she also doesn’t enjoy having to literally listen to him about to fuck someone else.

He texts her the next day: _Sorry. Accident._

She replies, _’It’s fine,’_ and then he answers _’Won’t happen again.’_ and she stares at that message for a really, really long time.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. He’s supposed to ask to see her. And then see her. Use that tone of voice on _her_. And she’ll have a few hours of pretending like things are alright, pretending like his bedsheets are a separate world before she has to return to the real one.

-

On a whim, she checks his Instagram, because they still haven’t unfollowed each other—they figured it would arouse more suspicion than anything else if they did—and he usually never posts anyway, only this time he has a new story up and she clicks it. It’s a video of this stunning blonde woman turning back to look at him on the sidewalk, all smiling and bright and flirty, and Allie recognizes the bar they’re outside, because it’s where she used to take Harry to get him to experience the city instead of staying cooped up in Cambridge all the time, and…

Yeah. She’s a fucking hypocrite.

-

Her name’s Miranda, or so Allie finds out because Harry won’t quit posting shit with them together. He still hasn’t called her.

She goes on a weekend trip with Max and drinks too much wine with him, does a striptease for him in their hotel room, doesn’t think about how she did the same thing for Harry last year in Martha’s Vineyard, doesn’t think about the fact that Miranda kind of looks exactly fucking like her.

-

One night, Allie’s the only person left in the office and is on the verge of breaking because she’s so overworked and drained and _tired_ of everything. She can’t really take this home to Max, because he works even longer hours than she does and gets pissed when she complains about it. There’s only ever one person she wants to talk to about this stuff, anyway, but he hasn’t called her.

She calls him.

“Allie,” he answers, and it’s not a question, not like he’s saying “hello.” It sounds like he can’t believe it.

“Hi,” she says. “I’m…” She doesn’t know. This isn’t how things are supposed to go. She never calls him.

He seems to hear something in her voice, because he asks, “Are you okay?” and she nearly cries. He must know this isn’t normal. She never calls him.

“Yeah,” she says, swallowing, not knowing if it’s true. She’s glad to hear his voice, though. The last time she heard him, he was talking to someone else. Maybe Miranda. “I’m okay. I just...how are you?”

There’s a pause on the other end. Then he sighs, the sound static through the receiver. She can almost picture him pinching his nose, the way he always does when he’s stressed. “What do you want, Allie?”

The tone of his voice forces her to realize some harsh truths, in a very short span of time. He’s not happy to hear from her. And it’s been months—no, over a _year_ , since they last saw each other. Since Harry started seeing Miranda. She doesn’t know why she thought it had been way shorter. 

And then she also realizes that he’s trying to get over her. Which he’s never done before.

She’s inexplicably pissed. She tells herself it’s that, anyway, rather than this yawning crack that splits down the center of her chest. It’s anger, at him for trying to end this thing without even telling her, at herself because, again, she is a fucking hypocrite and she knows it.

“How’s Allie 2.0? Miranda, right?” she says, and yeah, she’s not handling this gracefully. Not at all. Maybe this is how her exhaustion is manifesting itself, but deep down she knows that’s not the real reason.

He’s silent for a moment on the other end. “You’re real brave,” he says after a while. He sounds mad. She can picture him running his tongue across his teeth the way he does whenever he’s trying to keep his temper measured. This is good. If she can keep this up, she can get them to have a real big fight that’ll end with them meeting and letting out their anger the way she likes.

“When do I get to meet her?” she asks, and she can almost _hear_ his jaw clenching on the other end.

“You don’t,” he says shortly. And then he hangs up.

Yeah, this isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

  


**back when we were still changing for the better.  
wanting was enough.  
for me, it was enough.  
**

  


There are a lot of things in Harry's life he wishes he could go back and change. His relationship with his dad before he died. His subsequent relationship with his mom. His obsession with material things. Whatever.

He can never decide if falling in love with Allie is one of those things. Some days it is. Some days he misses her so fucking bad it feels like a piece of his chest is caving in. Some days he can't stand even the thought of her. How she's using him and he's just... _letting_ her. It gives him whiplash, how fast the way he feels about her turns. Because yeah, he _loves_ her and maybe (no, definitely) he shouldn't but he fucking does and when he's with her...God, it feels like he's twenty again, getting his hands on her, making her laugh, making her come. Loving her and feeling loved in return. That part’s the illusion, though. 

She's honestly just as beautiful as she was then. Maybe even more so. He can’t say, because the power of his memory, when it comes to her, is always dim compared to the real thing.

Some part of him never really thought she'd go through with the wedding. That she would, like, wake up and realize that it was _him_ , always him, or whatever other foolhardy wish he was harboring. Martha's Vineyard was sort of his last ditch attempt, now that he looks at it, to get her to see that that was how things could be all the time.

They could change for the better. They could have this—drinking wine on the balcony, in the sun together, making out in the pool, on the beach, her calling him to come inside and then laying in his arms, without the threat of a call or text from an unspoken third person hanging over their heads, without her having to slip out in the morning without saying anything. That could be their life, if she just...chose it. Chose him.

But then she didn't. She got married and still wanted to fuck around with him on the side, because that was enough for her. Harry's want for her was the constant in the equation, the thing she could always rely on, his feelings be damned. And he let her do it, too. Went along with it for _so_ long.

The last conversation they had makes his head hurt when he thinks about it. Her _"I don't know"_ and her _"No, I don't ever want that"_ eventually made his mouth feel bitter when the words settled, and then she left the same way she always did.

Harry kind of spiraled after that. Sleeping with Allie—the one from his firm, the one who is nothing at all like _his_ Allie—was a fluke. A kind of desperate, douchebaggy move, and also one that he could get in huge trouble for. Sleeping with everyone else after that is also basically a fluke, because Harry went with that trend and started picking up women who were nothing at all like Allie Pressman. In fact, he kind of swore off blonde women in general.

But then he meets Miranda. And...yeah, she and Allie look alike, he fucking knows it. He knows it _so_ well. The first time they were about to kiss, he was almost afraid to close his eyes because all he could see was wavy blonde hair and blue eyes and something in his chest ached with longing for something else, for someone else.

But she had felt nothing like Allie against him, and he was almost sick with relief. Things got easier after that.

He even survives Allie calling him. _Allie_ calling _him_ , trying to get a rise out of him or something. It works, he does get pissed. But hangs up, which he’s kind of proud of himself for. And then he gets this sick satisfaction that she's affected at all by him dating someone else. Dating, for real, which is definitely what he's doing with Miranda. He has no plans to stop, either. And then he gets mad at himself all over again for feeling satisfied at all, because he's supposed to be moving on. _Has_ moved on.

So yeah, so fucking what if Miranda looks like Allie. Sue him for having a type, apparently. She's a totally different person, and Harry likes who he is when he's with her. She's bubbly and vivacious and doesn't make him feel like he's a contingency plan.

(She also doesn't make him feel alive and engaged with life the way Allie does, even when they're fighting, but that's an avenue of thought he refuses to pursue.)

Their companies rent out the same space for their holiday parties at the end of the year, at some swanky bar split into two levels. It's meant to be sectioned off as one group per floor but obviously there's some overlap and he's there with Miranda when he bumps into her outside of the building's only restrooms on the first floor next to the stairs, and he almost fucking passes out from a) how shocked he is to see her and b) how good she looks.

Like he said, there's no comparison between his memory and the real thing.

She's wearing this dark burgundy dress and these gold star earrings that he recognizes, she told him they were her grandmother's when he asked about them one time years ago, and dark lipstick and...God. It doesn't help at all that Miranda's also wearing a red dress.

"Harry," she says in surprise, and yeah, they're going to have to do this. Pretend, for the sake of his girlfriend and all of Allie's coworkers.

"Allie—hey, how are you?" he says, hoping he doesn't sound fake as hell. Miranda’s smiling politely next to him, putting a hand on his arm. He shifts his weight. "This is Miranda. Miranda, this is Allie, she's—" He falters, mentally curses himself.

"An old friend from home," Allie supplies smoothly, reaching out to shake Miranda's hand. Harry feels dizzy. "Plus college."

Miranda is, of course, just about the most welcoming person Harry knows, takes it all in stride and says any friend of Harry's is a friend of hers. He can tell she notices the wedding ring on Allie's finger and is put at ease by it. They chat for a bit about nothing at all—work shit, surface level shit—before Allie's called away by one of her coworkers and Harry feels like he can breathe again once she's gone. Miranda's still next to him, on his arm, pressing a new drink into his hands from the downstairs bar, bless her.

"She's so nice, why haven't I met her before?" Miranda's saying, and Harry wants to be alone.

"We sort of lost touch. Just 'cause of getting caught up with life, you know?" Harry says, which is perfectly reasonable, because that's just what happens when you're an adult. Even though that's not what happened to him and Allie. At all.

Later, he gets up on the roof of the building, whiskey in hand, while Miranda stays inside to chat with some of his coworkers who absolutely adore her, the way everyone does. She knows he gets antsy about being in crowds for too long, just gives him an understanding peck on the cheek when he informs her he's going to go out for a breath of fresh air.

Allie finds him, because of course she does. He's leaning out against the railing when she comes up next to him and lights a cigarette. He looks over at her, his shoulders tense. He's only ever known her to smoke when she's at her most stressed—once before a particularly brutal finals season in college, once after one of Cassandra's incidents as they drove down to the hospital together. She takes a drag, blows the smoke up into the night air, and looks over at him, dark lipstick stains against the end of the cigarette held between her fingers. He already knows what she's going to say.

"Miranda's nice."

He knows. "I know."

"Thought you said I wasn't gonna get to meet her."

A muscle jumps in his jaw, and his eyebrows tick. There are some outdoor lamps distributed among the rooftop and she's standing right next to one, the glow of it hitting her hair, her legs bare under the coat she's wearing over her dress, and...she looks fucking golden. "This wasn't supposed to happen. Didn't know you guys were taking this space, too."

She laughs quietly and slides a little closer to him against the railing, and...she needs to not do that. He doesn't exactly move away. "I think 'this wasn't supposed to happen,' is basically the story of our lives, Harry." He breathes out an ironic laugh, breath puffing in icy fog in front of his face. She takes another drag, exhales the smoke off to the side, and he watches it swirl and eddy in the frozen air before disappearing into nothing.

He feels the need to ask, also wants to bring it up to be a little bit of an asshole. "How's Max?"

Allie taps out some ash onto the railing, shrugs a shoulder. "He's inside. You wanna go talk to him?" Yeah, there's nothing he wants less than that. She slides closer to him again, and he still doesn't move away. "You're well, though?" she asks, and he nods. And then she says, quietly, like it's some kind of secret that she can't help but reveal, "I miss you."

It hits him like a punch to the gut, and he looks down at her. She's even closer now, arm pressing against his, the smell of her perfume cutting through the frigid December night. "Allie," he says, and just her _name_ on his lips is making him hurt. The gentle sound of it, the single tap of his tongue against his teeth, the two easy syllables sliding out like they've always been there, in his mouth. Waiting.

"Harry," she says, and she wants him to kiss her. He knows that look well. There's kind of desperation in her eye now, like she's seizing the opportunity to make this happen, like it's now or never. Because he hasn't called her, and nor has she called him beyond that single time, and...that feels so long ago to him, at this point. Both of their partners are inside, in the same building, for God's sake.

But it would be easy. Lean over, close the gap between them, get sick with relief at the feeling of _Allie_ against him once again, get his hands in her hair, on her waist, under that stunning dress and fuck up her dark lipstick. Make up some excuse to their respective others about leaving early, go back to one of their places or a hotel or wherever and do what they know how to do. 

They're good at it. They're also good at hurting each other. Some masochistic part of Harry longs for it, even.

But, God, he's put in so much work and time to undo this. Miranda said that Allie was nice, but Harry kind of disagrees. He kind of thinks she’s cruel and selfish and what does it say about him if he wants her despite all that?

He said once that he could never give her peace if he tried, but what about himself? What if he wants some of that?

He leans away from her, and she blinks, her cigarette blowing ash into the wind from its glowing tip. Says, "Goodnight, Allie," and turns away from her, doesn't check to see if she's watching him go or if she's just turned back to smoke the rest of her cigarette over the city silently. Goes all the way back inside, back into the throng of people and tells Miranda that he's tired, he wants to go home, and then leaves with her.

  


**i knew you'd miss me once the thrill expired  
and you'd be standing in my front porch light  
and i knew you'd come back to me**

  


Allie always sort of thought that if she were to get divorced, it would be because Max found out about Harry, somehow. But that’s not even what happens.

It takes a really, really long time for it to sink in that she and Harry might be over for real. It doesn’t even hit her after the Christmas party, when he’d all but rejected her outright and left her all alone on the rooftop. Some part of her thought that he would come back to her—like he always has. Like the tide, like a pattern of migration. This was just a blip in the radar. A longer one than usual, but still just a blip.

No, it doesn’t sink in until _after_ she’s divorced. It’s amicable, or whatever. Max is the one who asks, he says they’re just not cut out for each other or something, his parents don’t think it’s the right fit either, she feels distant, it’s not what he thought it would be and they rushed into it. All that shit. Allie goes through with it and they don’t have any assets to divide up, thank God and it’s over and done with in a matter of months.

The entire process, she can’t help from feeling a little bit excited because...well, it’s finally happened. The thing she was never brave enough to do herself—put an end to things, and free her up to…

But then Harry still doesn’t call. He must know about the divorce. He _must_ , they have mutual friends, and he still doesn’t call. She honestly thought that he would.

That’s when it sinks in.

She doesn’t know how to deal. She goes and gets spectacularly drunk, meets a guy at a club who sort of looks like him, spends the entire time at his place feeling _wrong_ , because these aren’t his sheets, that’s not his voice in her ear, those aren’t his hands on her. She leaves right afterwards and wonders why, after getting divorced, all she can think about is a guy she hasn’t slept with in nearly three years at this point.

She thinks about calling him, but she’s afraid. That’s all this is—that’s all she’s ever been. Afraid. Of commitment, of happiness, of heartbreak, of love. She takes time off from work for the first time in ages, books a solo trip to the Amalfi Coast to like, find herself or whatever. But the wine and the beach and white linens just remind her of him and that time they spent in Martha’s Vineyard, and she rejects all the advances of the hot Italian guys who try to hit on her. Even the ones who kind of look like him. His grandfather’s from Naples—he told her that when they were in college. 

When she returns, all she wants to do is call him. She still doesn’t.

-

The one who does call her is Max, one late night, and he sounds exhausted on the phone and maybe a little drunk and Allie...feels bad. For all the time she spent telling herself she loved this guy. She likes him—he’s great, if not a little prissy and too beholden to his parents, but. She likes him. He asks if they made a mistake and she tells him no and he sighs like he’s relieved or something. Says he agrees but was second-guessing himself, just needed to hear it from her.

He hangs up and she thinks about calling Harry. She’s feeling a little masochistic, so she re-installs Instagram, because she deleted it sometime last year in the midst of the divorce, and pulls up his account. He hasn’t posted in a while, but she clicks something Miranda’s tagged in and then goes to her profile and sees—it’s not her latest post, but she doesn’t have to scroll down to see it on her screen—a closeup photo of two bodies against each other, Miranda's hand resting delicately against Harry's crisp white dress shirt, a diamond ring on her finger.

Oh.

Allie doesn’t even bother clicking on the post to bring it into full view. Just seeing it in the little preview grid is enough. She deletes the app again.

-

Allie sees him the very next day, and she’s not really a believer of fate or whatever, but it does feel like some twisted cosmic joke that, out of all times, this is when she sees him by coincidence.

It’s in the late afternoon, when she goes to sit under that oak tree in the park that used to be theirs, trying to get the last of the summer sunshine before it melts away into fall. He’s across the street, walking out of a store on the next block over from her apartment building, the park a square in the street grid between them. He’s wearing a blue linen shirt and even from this distance, he looks so good she wants to scream.

He’s too far away to spot her, she thinks, and she fucking _stares_ , wondering when he started wearing his hair like that, wondering what he was doing in the store, wondering if he’s happy with Miranda, wondering if they’ve sealed the deal yet. Wondering why she feels like she can’t fucking breathe, how it’s possible to not see a person for so long and yet still feel so _much_.

Then he turns around, not to face the park, not to where he would probably spot her with her back against this oak tree, but further into the distance. Upwards, over at her apartment complex. To her living room window, right smack dab in the center of one of the high rows against the outside of the building. There’s no possible way he’d be able to spot her even if she were standing there, but he looks. For a long time.

She holds her breath and watches him, until he shakes his head and goes in the other direction.

-

She’s a little bit drunk when she knocks on his door, but not so much that she’s not in charge of her decisions. Just enough to give her the courage to come over here in the first place.

This feels like a mistake. But it also feels like what she knows, and what she knows is that she’s not a good person, and he’s not a good person, but they are good at this. Hurting each other and not being able to stop. Wanting it, even.

Or maybe that’s just her, now. Maybe that’s what she’s here to find out, because he hasn’t called, but he _did_ look, earlier in the afternoon, and…

He opens the door. Stares at her, and part of her thinks he’s going to slam it in her face and then she’ll have her answer, but then he leans against the frame, crossing his arms, continues to look at her like she’s a ghost, or something. But he doesn’t look unhappy, and he still hasn’t said anything.

“Hi,” she breathes.

“Hi.” He looks simultaneously pained and relieved. Like this is both the worst and best possible thing.

She bites the inside of her cheek, then says, “I got divorced.” As if he didn’t already know.

“I know,” he says. Pauses, then adds, “I got engaged.”

“I know.”

They stand there, and Allie thinks of a million different things to say and says none of them. His porch light is on, and he looks practically golden in its glow, and she bites her tongue, thinking about the very first time she stood on this porch with him, after he bought this place, before she started seeing Max, after they broke up but were still kind of involved and she could tell he was trying to fix things between them, and she just sort of let him do as he pleased. Which included buying this place, and then kissing her until she saw stars here on this porch before he even brought her inside to show her around. She knows he’s thinking about it, too. She bites her lip and his eyes drop down and maybe she’s fucking sick for the rising feeling in her chest that accompanies that movement.

She swallows, and asks, “Where’s Miranda?”

“Not here.”

That’s good enough for her. She looks him in the eye, steels herself, and asks, “Can I come in?”

She’s trembling when he moves aside to let her in, looking tortured as he does so. Yeah, she’s an awful person. That’s not enough to stop her.

Not enough to stop him either, apparently. When he kisses her, before she’s barely through the doorway, the relief is so strong and so sickening that it nearly knocks her off her feet.

It’s his hands on her, it’s his voice in her ear, it’s his sheets, and yeah, this is what feels right. This is what she should have chosen a long time ago. But she fucking didn’t, and now they’re trapped in this vicious cycle, one of them always halfway out the door, cursed to double back in the end. Never moving forwards.

“Allie,” he says as she’s getting ready to leave, because she knows she’s not welcome to stay. She turns to him anyway, wondering how he’ll explain away the dark marks she left against his neck in a manifestation of her selfishness. “I’m still going to marry her.”

She doesn’t know what she expected him to say, but this feels par for the course. It’s too much to hope that they can be boring and happy, as much as they both wanted it at different times. It’s just not who they are.

“I know, Harry,” she says. But the words taste bitter in her mouth, and...yeah, this is how things are supposed to go, with them.

It doesn’t stop her from hoping, though. From wanting.

The next time they do it, and the next time after that, and for all the following times, Allie can’t help but think that they belong together, that they should just be together, instead of whatever this is.

**Author's Note:**

> there's an alternate ending where they get over each other and are happy for a few years before separating from their respective partners for unrelated reasons and reconcile as self-possessed individuals, but...that is not this one.
> 
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